Now: Kutlug Ataman: Perfect Strangers (media release)

Museum of Contemporary Art
Until 4 September 2005

Kutlug Ataman has built his style out of the interview era. He’s a consummate storyteller.

Image: Kutlug Ataman
The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (still) 2002
Four screen video installation
Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
© the artist

Fascinated with the ways in which people tell their own stories, Ataman’s film-based museum installations are portraits of individuals who live on the peripheries of society, defined by ghetto life, peculiar obsessions or transgressive sexualities. Themes of ‘otherness’ and ‘obsession’ run throughout Ataman’s works, individual stories blurring the distinction between fact and fiction as people construct their identities before the artist’s camera.

All of Ataman’s subjects are friends or acquaintances. In his works he captures their true stories and real lives, making their idiosyncrasies and obsessions his own as he repeatedly turns them into works of art. Ataman is a Carnegie Prize winner, Turner Prize short-lister and internationally renowned artist/film-maker. His new feature film Two Girls  premiered at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

Ataman’s museum works explore the ways in which we attempt to build our identity in words, how we explain ourselves and how we draw on both fact and fiction to create a sense of who we are that adequately sums us up for others. They take the form of interviews with people who have an interesting story to tell – their story. There are many gaps. There are some white lies. There are lots of ways in which words can never be enough. But there is also an authenticity that lies in the self-expression of a person seeking to say who they are, raw and unmediated, when asked:

“…only in actual speech can we witness this amazing rewriting of one’s history and reality. What else is there?”  (Kutlug Ataman)

Curated by MCA Senior Curator Rachel Kent, Kutlug Ataman: Perfect Strangers also inaugurates his new work Küba (2004) in the southern hemisphere. Commissioned by Artangel, it is co-produced by five international institutions including the MCA.

Küba comprises forty battered thrift-store TV screens, each with their own comfortable, domestic chair – not unlike what we might see in the homes of the people they document. On each, one person tells their story straight to camera – an incredibly intimate conversation about lives that have led to this strange shanty-town that is also a place of remarkable solidarity.

Other highlights of Kutlug Ataman’s career are on display in Perfect Strangers.
Catch them at the MCA until 4 September, 2005

Museum of Contemporary Art
140 George Street
The Rocks NSW 2000 Australia 
Telephone: (+612) 9252 4033
Email: mail@mca.com.au  
MCA Infoline: (+612) 9241 5892
(24 hour recorded information)

Bill Viola: The Passions, a mesmerising exhibition of recent work by the internationally-renowned American video and sound installation artist Bill Viola, opens at the National Gallery of Australia on 29 July 2005. The exhibition organised by the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, has toured successfully to the National Gallery, London, and Fundació ‘la Caixa’, Madrid. The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is the sole Australian venue for this large-scale exhibition.

Image: Bill Viola
United States of America born 1951
Emergence 2002
high-definition video rear projection on wall-mounted screen
200.0 x 200.0 cm (projected image)
no. 1 from an edition of 3
This work was commissioned by the J Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles
© Bill Viola
Photograph: Kira Perov
Courtesy the artist and the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Since the 1970s Viola’s videos and installations have dealt with themes of perception, memory, self-awareness and expression. In The Passions, Viola tackles one of the oldest problems in art: how to convey the power and complexity of human feelings. Using new technology, he examines the manifestations of emotions, through silence, extreme slow-motion, and psychologically-gripping depictions of the faces and bodies of his performers.

Bill Viola: The Passions  promises to be a must-see for anyone interested in art, the moving image, performance, technology and the big issues of life. A comprehensive exhibition program of events accompanies the exhibition to bring additional insight into the work of Bill Viola.

Bill Viola: The Passions  from 29 July 2005 – 6 Novenmber 2005 at the National Gallery of Australia.

National Gallery of Australia
Open daily 10am–5pm
Parkes Place, Parkes ACT 2600
GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601
+61 2 6240 6502

And see what The Art Life  is up to this week ...